


The Silent Language

by Kogiopsis



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, SANDERSON Brandon - Works, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: F/F, WoR spoilers, post-WoR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3309050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kogiopsis/pseuds/Kogiopsis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shallan is not the sort of character who grieves openly - or who deals with any of her emotions openly - but that's hardly going to keep me from writing about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Language

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abalidoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abalidoth/gifts).



She dreams infrequently, but when she does she dreams of Jasnah.  
(Shallan’s mind has always shown her that which she loves and that which she doesn’t want to see, all the more when they are the same.)

She finds herself once more walking the halls of the Palanaeum, but its walls are solid slick black and the light from the single sphere she carries seems to be swallowed by their darkness. Still, her feet know the way and she navigates unerringly, reaches out her freehand to open the door -  
The room beyond is an island of normalcy in the sea of black; it is furnished and colored as she remembers, and within - seated at the table, a vase of spheres illuminating its surface and a stack of books - is her mentor.

Jasnah in Shallan’s dreams is everything she was in life, and Shallan drinks in the sight of her: from warm tan skin to dark shining hair to elegant indigo havah. She is lovely, composed, in control - the furthest thing from the crumpled corpse that was Shallan’s last sight of her.Emotion - grief, fear, relief she knows is false, and worst of all longing - crashes over Shallan like a wave. She collapses to the floor, bowing her head and curling her arms over her chest as if she can hold in the pain. There is a rustling of paper, then of fabric, and an embroidered hem before her eyes. A hand on her shoulder, almost tangible enough to be real.

"Child, what-"

She wakes abruptly, tears at the corners of her eyes and a wrenching feeling in her chest.

***

The journey to the Shattered Plains is long and Shallan’s sleep during it too light and restless for dreams that last long. She sees Jasnah in them again, for moments: glimpses in the distance of her striding Kharbranth’s streets, holding up her hand to soulcast, brushing off the unwanted attention of yet another ardent. Breathing in stormlight, slow and steady, her face strained and shadows under her eyes. Conversing with a being that looks like her spren, Ivory, grown to human size. Leaning forward, bringing one fist down, her braided hair slipping over her shoulder. Jasnah as she outwardly presented herself, Jasnah as Shallan was just beginning to know her, Jasnah as she might have been, a Knight Radiant in her own right.

Shallan thinks about her dreams during the day, sometimes. She doesn’t want to - thinking about Jasnah is weakness she can’t afford. Her shell of confidence is so new and so fragile, and if she considers for too long that horrible night it will crumble around her. But the dreams remind her, keep it simmering in her mind.

The conclusion that she comes to is this: that she failed Jasnah, and that this is the second time she has done so. The first was in allowing Kabsal as close as she did. The second - fresh blood on white sheets, a blade striking wood, and Shallan herself with all the power in the world to protect Alethkar’s princess standing frozen in shock instead of acting. There had been no ten heartbeats’ wait preventing her, nothing but her own fear and indecision and panic.

She will grow stronger.

When she turns Pattern on Tyn, she thinks of violet eyes and difficult things she had not had the courage to face.

***

She speaks to Jasnah in her dreams only once, the night after the armies arrive in Urithiru. Jasnah stands under an arch of golden-hued stone, and her clothing and face appear worn and damaged by travel. She is turned into the gate, as if about to step through, and Shallan calls out her name to keep her back. Jasnah’s eyes are wide when she turns, showing more surprise than Shallan had ever seen from her in their time together. Shallan runs to catch up.

"I’m sorry," she says, breathless but hurrying the words out anyway. This is just a dream, but it may be the only chance of absolution she ever has.

"I’m sorry," Shallan says again, and catches Jasnah’s hands in her own: freehand to safehand, intimate in any other context. "I should have done something, but I was afraid. I… I am still afraid." Bold words about falling from the cliffs of the city mean nothing. The fear that clutches at her heart is of failing in her new role, of being unable to carry the weight of the words ‘Lady Radiant’.

Jasnah pulls her hands free and Shallan looks up, wild and lost and thinking she has been rejected - but Jasnah grips her by the shoulders and pulls her close, kissing her forehead gently.

"It is not the job of the student to protect her teacher," she says, and Shallan swears that she can feel breath across her skin. "I am sorry that I left you alone. I never meant to."

Shallan’s hands curl and uncurl convulsively, and then she hurls herself forward into Jasnah’s arms, pressing her face into her teacher’s chest and wrapping her arms around Jasnah’s ribcage. Jasnah holds her close for long minutes, and Shallan does not sob but just trembles, breathing hard. When she finally releases her grip on Jasnah, she is dizzy and her knees feel weak.

"Thank you," she says.

Jasnah regards her in silence, and then her lips quirk up in the smallest of smiles. She turns and steps through the arch and vanishes in a swirl of light.

***

Shallan breathes in stormlight and, instead of running through the halls of Urithiru, throws herself in long leaps off of its tiers, flying down them as if they were stairs. She strikes the plateau with a crack, but when she straightens is sure that it was stone and not her bones; the light has protected her well.

The message did not lie: Jasnah is there, travel-stained and shoulders drooping fractionally with exhaustion, but she is  _there_  and alive and Shallan could swear her heart stops for a moment. Still, she walks forward instead of sprinting, maintaining an appearance of decorum at the very least.

Jasnah’s clothes are the same that she last dreamed her in. She turns and - Shallan is frozen to the spot as surely as if her feet are rooted in rock - walks forward, reaches out, cups Shallan’s jaw with her freehand.

"I am so proud of you," she says, and the tears Shallan has held in for weeks spill over at last.


End file.
